Self Portrait: Scratched out, it's all in the wrist

This artwork is not available to buy as a custom printThis artwork is not available to buy as a custom print

About this artwork

This theatrical and complex self-portrait is one of the last paintings Campbell completed before his untimely death in 2007. It is filled with a rich narrative, incorporating figures and symbols, mixed together in a dream-like composition. The artist presents himself as a Christ figure, displaying his palms which show stigmata. To the left a cross is marked out with police tape, which, as testament to Campbell’s dark humour, reads “Police. Death In Progress’. He takes this further with a skull visible at the base of the cross, a reference to Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified. Crammed with death and religious symbolism, it is hard not to consider this work as a portrait of a man in some way aware that death was on his doorstep.

Steven Campbell

Steven Campbell

Steven Campbell emerged as the leading figure of a group of Scottish figurative painters who began to exhibit their work in the early 1980s. After working as an engineer for seven years, in 1982 Campbell graduated from Glasgow School of Art. A Fulbright Scholarship took him to New York, where…